June 2016

June 30, 2006

Sleeps four. Actually, for a country that's approximately the size of Biggie Smalls, Monaco is happening. It's 1.95 kilometers of supercondensed fun. You can gamble in Monaco. You can drive your car in tight little circles in Monaco. You have to drive your car in tight little circles in Monaco if you want to stay in Monaco. And everybody wants to stay in Monaco! The people of Monaco are referred to as Monegasques or Monacans. How cool is that? If all but one of these 32,653 Monacans were to die, the survivor would become the Last of the Monacans. Monaco has one of everything. Monaco has one beach and one casino and one palace and one crop (the prince's valet's kid's pot plant) and one bus and one ATM machine and two ports. Aha! We lied! Yes, you have your pick of ports: there is the Port of Monaco (our personal favorite) and the Port of Fontvieille (our personal second favorite). Did we mention that Monaco is small? Tiny? Diminutive? Teensy weensy? Dinky? Miniscule? Microscopic? Not even detectable under a microscope? You could, and this is a fact, throw Monaco into the trunk of your car and drive around with it, if you so desired. You could shoplift Monaco. You could accidentally toss Monaco into the trash and then spend your evening wondering where Monaco went until with a thrill of horror you said to yourself, "I didn't throw Monaco in the trash, did I? Did I??? Holy shit, it has a GDP of $870,000,000!" One time we were running with Monaco and we tripped and Monaco nearly took our eye out. And this after our mom told us, "Never run with Monaco, you could lose an eye!" Monaco is connected to France by a door. People from France often wander through this door (it is in a hotel lobby) and say, "Why does everyone suddenly look Monacan?" Here is a fun fact about Monaco: It has successfully sought to diversify into services and small, high-value-added, nonpolluting industries. How about that? Let's hear it for tiny, high-value-added Monaco! Here's another interesting fact about Monaco: Its defense is the responsibility of France. It is our guess that, at this very moment, everyone in Monaco is taking German lessons.

Where would the Norwegian ice industry be without ice block tongs? We were given our first pair of ice block tongs at age 12 by our father, Olaf. This same pair of tongs had been handed down to him by his father, Gustaf, who was given the tongs at 12 by his father, Knut. The day after we were given the precious gift of the ice tongs, we dropped them into a hole in the thick ice of the fjord. Our father, Olaf, his father, Gustaf, and his father, Knut, all screamed and leaped into the hole after the tongs. They were all excellent swimmers, but the narwhals were hungry that year. Cod were scarce. Olaf, Gustaf, and Knut, less so.

Of the Night of the Long Knives, during which Hitler purged the SA. It is not to be confused with "Nights in White Satin" by the Moody Blues. Or Night of the Iguana by Tennessee Williams. Or "Night and Day" by the execrable Joe Jackson. Or "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights" by Freddie Fender. Or the night we fucked up our car's fender while wasted. Or our high school prom night, which was like The Night of the Long Knives thanks to its "Bicentennial Castration" theme. Or Hitler's prom night, the theme of which was "Kristallnacht."

We could be at our pad in South Beach, snorting cocaine off the pulchritidinous melons of delectable supermodel Tawny Buttox. This is just a hobby, something to do while we're not trading illegal Nazi artifacts with Helmut Newton's debased son, Karllll. A way to wile away the time between polo matches with our dear personal friends Tommy Lee Jones and Baby Doc Duvalier, Jr. Something to laugh about with the Emir. Tawny, come. Write something for our readers while we sip Kristal from the hollows formed by your exquisite collarbones.

Erik von Mannteufel, the greatest of all rock theorists, lived his whole life in East Prussia, in an area that is now part of Poland. Mannteufel has often been called "the Clausewitz of rock" for his far-seeing ideas on classic rock. Without him, there would be no 14-minute drum solos, gongs, quadruple-live albums, or "Karn Evil 9". He is also credited with inventing the rock guitar solo "fuck face" and the double-necked guitar. But he is most famous for his "Deep Purple Prinzip," which he explored in his 697-page opus, Examination Into the Phenomenology of Come Taste the Band. Briefly stated, the Deep Purple Prinzip states that "shallow virtuosity + Japanese popularity + availability of David Coverdale as ringer + willingness to cavort in bad spandex (i.e., all spandex) and actually be seen with David Coverdale = a potentially infinite number of bad live albums." Thus far, Deep Purple has released some 26 of them.